By about 1706 ‘The Red Priest’ ceased to say Mass, later claiming that this was on account of chronic asthma-which, it must be noted, never stopped him from undertaking numerous rigorous journeys (to Florence, Rome, Prague and Vienna) in pursuit of opera commissions. It was also in 1703 that he was recruited as a tutor of several string instruments at the Ospedale della Pietà, one of Venice’s four ‘Ospedali Grandi’ renowned for the advanced musical abilities of foundlings and orphans, and with which he had an on-and-off association for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, by the time he was ordained as a priest on 23 March 1703 (aged twenty-five) he had long since made his first documented public performance as an extra violinist at St Mark’s in Christmas services (in 1696).
Taught the violin his by father, Vivaldi trained for the priesthood in the family’s local parish of San Martino in the Castello district of Venice.
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